1,500-Year-Old Quran Manuscript Could Be Oldest Known Copy

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A 1,500-year-old parchment could be one of the oldest known
copies of the Quran, possibly dating back to a time that
overlapped with the life of the Prophet Muhammad, according to
researchers who recently dated the manuscript fragments.

The text underwent radiocarbon dating, which measured the age of
the find's organic materials. Researchers at the University of
Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, found that the leaves of
parchment date back to A.D. 568 and A.D. 645.

The
Prophet Muhammad is thought to have lived between A.D. 570
and A.D. 632, and according to Muslim tradition, he received the
revelations that make up the Quran between A.D. 610 and A.D. 632.
The divine message was not written at that time, though.
"Instead, the revelations were preserved in the 'memories of
men,'" said David Thomas and Nadir Dinshaw, both religious
professors at the University of Birmingham.

The radiocarbon dates from the parchment indicate that the animal
that provided the parchment lived during or right after the
lifetime of Muhammad. "This means that the parts of the Quran
that are written on the parchment can, with a degree of
confidence, be dated to less than two decades after Muhammad's
death," Thomas and Dinshaw said.

The
parchment likely came from the skin of a calf, goat or sheep,
the researchers said. The skin would have been first cleaned of
any hair or flesh and then stretched on a wooden frame. As the
skin is stretched, the parchment maker scrapes the surface with a
curved knife, wets the skin and dries it in rotation several
times to bring the parchment to an ideal thickness and tightness.

Researchers dated the parchmentby measuring the
radioactive decay of carbon-14, a common way to determine the
age of ancient papers and parchments. Carbon isotopes, or carbon
atoms of varying weight, float around in relatively constant
proportions in Earth's atmosphere, and all living things have the
same ratio of stable carbon to radioactive carbon-14. When an
organism dies, the radioactive carbon decays at predictable rates
over time, which means researchers can examine the remaining
levels of carbon-14 to make age estimates.

The Quran manuscript covers two parchment leaves and contains
parts of the suras (chapters) 18 through 20, written with ink in
an early form of Arabic script called Hijazi. The manuscript had
been improperly bound with leaves of a similar Quran manuscript
that dated to the late 7th century. That text was kept in the
University of Birmingham's Mingana Collection of Middle Eastern
manuscripts, held in the Cadbury Research Library.

Although most of the divine revelations received by the Prophet
Muhammad were committed to memory, parts were written down on
parchment, stone, palm leaves and the shoulder blades of camels,
the researchers said. "Caliph Abu Bakr, the first leader of the
Muslim community after Muhammad, ordered the collection of all
Quranic material in the form of a book," Thomas and Dinshaw said.

The final written version, considered the authoritative account,
was completed under the direction of Caliph Uthman ibn Affan, the
third leader of the Muslim community, in about A.D. 650, and was
distributed to the main cities under Muslim rule.

" Muslims
believe that the Quran they read today is the same text that
was standardized under Uthman, and regard it as the exact record
of the revelations that were delivered to Muhammad," Thomas and
Dinshaw said.

"This is indeed an exciting discovery," said Muhammad Isa Waley,
lead curator for Persian and Turkish manuscripts at the British
Library. "The Muslim communitywas not wealthy enough to stockpile
animal skins for decades, and to produce a complete Mushaf, or
copy, of the Holy Qur'an required a great many of them," he
added.

"This — along with the sheer beauty of the content and the
surprisingly clear Hijazi script — is news to rejoice Muslim
hearts," Waley said.